1 Correct answer
Hi all,
You can import and export Tagged Text from InDesign. We've not changed anything recently related to this. Here's a PDF file you can check for more details about InDesign Tagged Text: PDF
Thanks,
Om
17
Replies
Ha, very old but still very fantastic and useful! 
I wonder why they bother to increment the version number while not changing anything else about it?
Hi together,
currently I'm looking for some documentation on the tag cSpecialGlyph that is not listed in the linked PDF from reply 4.
It seems that at least one tag is missing in the documentation there. I suspect that are many or some more undocumented.
I found one hint about cSpecialGlyph in a Adobe Tech Note from 2012:
Excruciating details about the Adobe Tech Note #5079 update
…There is special syntax for specifying glyphs by CID. The following is used to specify CID+23058:
<cSpecialGlyph:23058><cSpecialGlyph:>
And another hint in an ExtendScript script from about 2009 where in effect the following is written to a temp Tagged Text file:
<cSpecialGlyph:num><0xFFFD><cSpecialGlyph:>
where num is a variable inside a for loop. For every glyph in the loop the same unicode code point is "applied" ( ? ). Or is this meant as a fall back mechanism if the special glyph with a distinct number is not available?
Source of the script can be downloaded here:
https://indesignsecrets.com/make-a-font-contact-sheet-in-indesign.php
If <0xFFFD> is meant as a fall back it does not work as expected.
On the contrary it leaves the rendered glyphs on a page in a very strange state of existence:
What do I mean with very strange state?
Three main issues:
1. You cannot use Find/Change with Text or GREP to find this selected character.
What you can find is <FFFD> with Text Find or \x{FFFD} with GREP find instead.
But, as I said earlier, all writing glyphs ( not the blanks ) are turned to Unicode point FFFD.
And Text Find or GREP find will only find the ones according to the information in the Info Panel.
2. If you apply a different font to the text the appearance of the glyphs will change.
But in a surprising way!
Just an example. Same document as before. Same text frame. Same story.
The only change is: I applied Minion Pro to the text frame and its text:
3. If I test the contents of the text frame by ExtendScript's contents property the value is a string where blank characters and special character FFFD do alternate.
If someone likes to have a look into this strange document download it from my Dropbox account as IDML file:
Dropbox - SourceSansPro-Light-CharacterMap-CC-2019.idml - Simplify your life
Regards,
Uwe
Okay, doing that test with an IDMS tells me absolutely nothing 
.
The contents of regular text gets inserted as
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/Font">
<Properties>
<AppliedFont type="string">Myriad Pro</AppliedFont>
</Properties>
<Content>test = </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
and for an unassigned character you get the same as when using the INX route:
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/Font">
<Properties>
<AppliedFont type="string">Calibri</AppliedFont>
<CustomGlyph type="string">$ID/g2155</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>�</Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
-- notice that �? Its code is U+FFFD again, InDesign's personal internal placeholder. Now, what if you change the CustomGlyph value to something that should be a character (in Calibri), like 845, the GID for U+003F "?"? It does not work. Not only do you still get the U+FFFD code again, but, as with INX in the worst-case scenario, you also lose the original GID and so you get the Pink Box of Denial. It works again correctly with a custom CID if – and only if – the character does not have a Unicode assigned to it:
By the way, did anyone else know that you can copy an image off your screen and paste it directly into the Jive Editor? It saves much time saving temporary images such as this one. It was always possible with Mac OS X (Shift+Alt+Cmd+4), and the most recent Windows 10 update has added the shortcut Windows+Shift+S for exactly the same purpose.
jane-e wrote
…Is this an official Adobe PDF? …
Hi Jane,
yes, this is an official Adobe PDF. Perhaps a little bit outdated.
At least there once was a PDF about Tagged Text that had CS5 in its title instead of CS4 like this one.
I have no high hopes that tag cSpecialGlyph will be explained in that, because that tag already was available with InDesign CS3.
For all reasons explained I would never work with that tag. The results are visually ok, but the "wrong" Unicode code point FFFD will even travel to an exported PDF. So for strictly printing only, yes, we can use this, but never for distributing digital files like PDFs or InDesign documents.
Here I exported this document done with the script that used Tagged Text import with cSpecialGlyph to PDF/X-4 and used Acrobat's Find feature for character "A". One of the results is rather baffling:
Hi Jongware,
IDMS unfortunately gives no hint about the Unicode code points.
Here an excerpt of a sample IDMS file:
<Story Self="ud8" AppliedTOCStyle="n" UserText="true" IsEndnoteStory="false" TrackChanges="false" StoryTitle="$ID/" AppliedNamedGrid="n">
<StoryPreference OpticalMarginAlignment="false" OpticalMarginSize="12" FrameType="TextFrameType" StoryOrientation="Horizontal" StoryDirection="LeftToRightDirection" />
<InCopyExportOption IncludeGraphicProxies="true" IncludeAllResources="false" />
<ParagraphStyleRange AppliedParagraphStyle="ParagraphStyle/FontTableStyle">
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/$ID/[No character style]">
<Properties>
<CustomGlyph type="long">1</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>� </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/$ID/[No character style]">
<Properties>
<CustomGlyph type="long">2</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>� </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/$ID/[No character style]">
<Properties>
<CustomGlyph type="long">3</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>� </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/$ID/[No character style]">
<Properties>
<CustomGlyph type="long">4</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>� </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/$ID/[No character style]">
<Properties>
<CustomGlyph type="long">5</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>� </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
<CharacterStyleRange AppliedCharacterStyle="CharacterStyle/$ID/[No character style]">
<Properties>
<CustomGlyph type="long">6</CustomGlyph>
</Properties>
<Content>� </Content>
</CharacterStyleRange>
Regards,
Uwe
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